Featured Post

This essay is a very belated response to a " part 1 " published in February 2015. The gist of that essay was a response to a corre...

Monday, November 19, 2012

STALKING THE SYMBOLIC SNIPE

In a recent issue of my comics-apa, the
question arose: can one fairly make symbolic interpretations of a work when
there’s no evidence that the creator of the work intentionally structured the
work to reflect that symbolism?

On one hand, any answer one gives
must take into account the centrality of symbolic action to the experience of
fiction.The human mind has the ability
to associate the nature of a fictional character—that is, whether he represents “goodness,”
“badness,” or something in between-- with the reader’s concerns, so that the reader
can identify (whether in a mood of sympathy or antipathy) with that character.Without this ability, fiction holds no meaning.It might be tempting to dispense with any
symbolic associations that are not explicitly called up by an author’s
text.But direct allegory, while to some
degree present in all fiction, is not the way most authors express
themselves.Perhaps the reason so many
critics must hunt literary meanings is because authors have evolved so many
ways to camoflague their symbolic themes and motifs.

On the other hand, everyone has
seen examples of critics who can be fairly accused of “snipe-hunting”—with the
modification that in such cases, it’s the critic who creates his own Monster of
Deep Meaning and proceeds to hunt it anywhere and everywhere.The first semi-thoughtful critiques of the
comics-medium boiled down to snipe-hunts, where the critics found in comics
symbols of immoral modernity and psychosexual perversion.

One approach, possibly designed to
circumvent the problem, takes a relativist tack.One of my apa-members described having seen a
poet who, upon meeting a reader who subjected the poet to a long and earnest
critique of his Real Meaning, responded to that reader, “If you see that there,
then I meant for it to be there.”The
poet may have spoken this way to avoid a conflict, or he may have been of the
honest opinion that there are no untrue responses to a given work.

I would frame the problem
differently: there can be untrue responses, but they may spring from true
causes.

In the same apa-issue that
continued this mini-debate about symbol-hunting, another member cited the
opinion of writer Alan Moore on the best-known character of another author: Ian
Fleming’s James Bond.Quoting from an
introduction to Frank Miller’s THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, Moore said:

“…we begin to see that the
overriding factor in James Bond’s psychological makeup is his utter hatred and
contempt for women.”

Years later, Moore would produce a
satirical version of Bond for BLACK DOSSIER, a chapter of his LEAGUE OF
EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN series, in which Moore’s Bond-doppelganger was in every
way a rotter, an abuser of women, etc.

Moore’s second commentary on what
he thought of James Bond, since it takes the form of fiction, cannot be deemed
criticism as such.His first comment
can, although it’s extremely weak criticism.

Nowhere in the introduction does
Moore cite examples of the “utter hatred and contempt for women” he finds in
the Bond books, nor is he clear as to whether Fleming presented his misogyny overtly or
covertly.I *suspect,* however, that at
the time of the comment Moore knew that Fleming, though predominantly an author
of “male” fiction, did have female readers.Thus Moore would be most likely to claim that Fleming’s female readers
did not pick up on the misogyny of either author or character because it was
hidden, though not from the discernment of a dedicated snipe-hunter like Alan
Moore.

In case it isn’t evident from my
calling Moore a “snipe-hunter,” I do deem Moore’s critique of Fleming to be a
case of an untrue response to the symbolism present in the Fleming
Bond-books.That response does however
spring from true causes, both within the fiction being critiqued and within the
critiquer.

Ian Fleming was, in essence, what
critics today would call a “masculinist.”Many authors have written fiction aimed at a predominantly male audience
without being masculinists. Bond’s multiple conquests of beautiful women were a
staple device in popular men’s fiction.Fleming is often attacked for this trope, but that in itself does not
make him excessively masculinist.Moore’s animus for Fleming may have originated from Bond making sexist
remarks that were typical for men of that period.Some of these remarks mock women, or show
confusion about women.But do they
connote “utter hatred and contempt for women,” or are they attempts to capture
the real way men of the period spoke?

Based on my own readings of the
Bond books, I do consider Fleming an arch-conservative who had little empathy
for anyone outside of his own bailiwick.That lack of empathy for women, however, does not translate into “hatred
and contempt.”A woman-hater might
pretend to defend women from attacks in order to bed them, but Bond does not
bed Tiffy in “Man with the Golden Gun” after villain Scaramanga kills her pet
birds; instead, he gives her money to buy new birds and never sees her
again.One can’t imagine Moore’s phony
Bond sparing the life of the female assassin in “The Living Daylights” out of a
knightly reluctance to kill a woman.Despite Fleming’s masculinist tendencies, the Bond books are replete
with powerful or imposing women, ranging from villainesses like Rosa Klebb and
Irma Bunt to heroines like Domino Vitale and Tracy Draco—possibly one reason
Fleming has sustained a female readership.

The other “true cause” results from
the critiquer’s own biases and priorities, which are inevitably present in all
readers.The most desirable relationship
between reader and work is one I call “projected reciprocity,” in which the
reader faithfully absorbs everything the author says, whether direct or
indirect, and projects it upon the “viewscreen” of his own priorities, to gauge
in what ways he agrees and/or disagrees with the author’s world.

However, when the reader rushes to
judgment as I believe Alan Moore did, what one gets is “pure projection.”Here the reader is “set off” by whatever
offends him and recognizes no ambivalences.A reader like Moore may have “true” cause for his animus against, say,
real-world misogyny, but he’s aimed his ire at the wrong target.

Whenever I attempt to “read” the
latent symbolism of a work—by which I mean, whatever the author has not made
literal and manifest—I frame it as a philosophical proposition, for which I can
offer proofs drawn from my own experience of “projected reciprocity.”Because so much symbolism is covert—sometimes
hidden even from the author—the propositions of a symbol-hunter are not so much
“X symbolism is there” but rather “X symbolism could be there, if it can be
justified by some chain of associations.”But even these justifications must be mediated by a reader’s subjective
reaction to the work.So it’s
understandable that for many, even the most articulate search for covert
symbolism may seem no better than an Alan Moore snipe-hunt.